Tag Archives: Web

434. If you want to live and thrive let the spider run alive. ~American Quaker saying

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Little Miss Natalie sat on a tuffet
Pulling her weeds today
Along came a spider
Who sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Natalie away.

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Much like a subtle spider which doth sit
In middle of her web, which spreadeth wide;
If aught do touch the utmost thread of it,
She feels it instantly on every side.
~Sir John Davies

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Actually the spider didn’t frighten me away because I saw the thing before I ventured into its sticky lair and was keeping an eye on it. There was a time though that had I seen the likes of this guy, I would have let out a yelp, jumped up, and scampered far, far away. But the aging gardener that I am now is way too fascinated by the wondrous and interactive nature of Creation to do that these days. I did, however, not sit on my “tuffet” much longer because I wanted to get a picture of the spider and its web. As spiders go, it was a rather handsome fellow, and I’d never seen a web that had a vertical zig-zag strip down the middle like this one had. But shortly after I got up, grabbed my camera, and got back out there, I had only snapped a couple of shots when one of my yard cats moseyed up at my feet and touched the bottom of the web with his tail.  And as Sir Davies suggests the spider felt it because it then scurried quickly up to the top of its web to hide under an overhanging leaf. I waited a bit but it was hot and the spider, it seems, was just not going to leave the safety of its sheltering leaf. So finally I took a deep breath and reached out gingerly to tap the top of the leaf and sure enough when I did down the creature came back to the center of its web. As luck would have it, this time it went down the other side of the web which allowed me to get a shot of its underbelly. So if you look carefully at the photos, you can see its back in the first one and in the second one you see its underside through the web.

Such is the destiny of all who forget God; so perishes the hope of the godless.  What they trust in is fragile; what they rely on is a spider’s web. They lean on the web, but it gives way; they cling to it, but it does not hold. ~Job 8:13-15   ✝

Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you save, you heal, you restore, and you reveal Your Father’s heart to us! You have captured me with grace and I’m caught in Your infinite embrace! Like Saint Hildegard Lord, may I too be a feather on your holy breath and spread, like seeds, the gospel abroad.

421. Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible. ~Virginia Woolf

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The bird a nest,
the spider a web,
man friendship.
~William Blake

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A spider, industrious and tireless, has made its home the rose covered trellis over the small porch outside my studio. I saw him again late yesterday while I was rocking in my chair beneath the arch; it kept dropping down on slender, silky threads and dangling in mid-air about a foot below the zenith of the arch. Then as darkness descended it began in earnest weaving its treacherous web; back and forth, back and forth it moved under the partially obscured waxing moon. As it worked, it glided like a skater along its airy tightropes, and a rumbling noise off in the distance added a touch of the sinister to the scene. Watching the vagabond’s rhythmic dance in the weaving of its intricate labyrinth of stickiness started lulling me into an almost hypnotic stupor, so much so that sleepiness lay heavy on my eyelids. But that ended quickly as I opened one eye just in time to see the spider begin what looked like a free fall into a bottomless pit of oblivion. When it finally stopped, it was hanging about eye level and within a foot of my startled face. Which of us was the more frightened, I know not, but seconds later it had beat a rapid retreat up its silky rope, and I had bid it goodnight and retreated indoors. In my mind, both were healthy acts of cowardice.

My eyes are ever on the Lord for only He will release my feet from the snare. ~Psalm 25:15  ✝

Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you save, you heal, you restore, and you reveal Your Father’s heart to us! You have captured me with grace and I’m caught in Your infinite embrace! Like Saint Hildegard Lord, may I too be a feather on your holy breath and spread, like seeds, the gospel abroad.

** Image via Pinterest

358. White. . .is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. . . ~G. K. Chesterton

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White, pristine, unblemished…

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The paper I write is white

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White is holy, pure

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They say light is white
Because it combines all colors

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So white is the mother of all colors

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The churning of all yellow, blue, green

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Colors sacrifice their egos
To the eternal white
The matriarch of all colors

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The fountain of extent colors
~Excerpted random lines
from a poem by John Matthew

White appears often in nature, and down through the ages references have been made to it in music, art, poetry, and prose. It seems it’s a color many have sought and still seek to embrace. Could it be because it’s the color of the heavenly orbs, the moon and stars that illuminate darkness, or because it’s the color of light, light that warms, heals, and inspires faith, or because it’s perceived as the color of purity, purity of the spirit, of the soul, and in the Christ. Regardless of what draws mortals into its web, many, like me, adore white and sing its praises especially the white flowery faces that grace a garden. In them it’s easy to see that as Chesterton asserts the color white is a “shining and affirmative” thing. Walter Bellingrath once rightfully noted that a garden “is like a beautiful woman with a different ball gown for each week of the year.” And dressed in her gowns of glistening white, a garden is one of the most glamorous and inspiring muses at the party.

Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favors what you do. Always be clothed in white, and always anoint your head with oil. ~Ecclesiastes 9:7-8 ✝

Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you save, you heal, you restore, and you reveal Your Father’s heart to us! You have captured me with grace and I’m caught in Your infinite embrace!

**Some of the images are from Pinterest

299. Last weekend, there came a bitter cold snap, which did great damage to my garden…It is sad that Nature plays such tricks on us poor mortals, inviting us with sunny smiles to confide in her, and then, when we are entirely within her power, striking us to the heart. ~Edited and adapted excerpt from Nathaniel Hawthorne

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Who loves a garden
Finds within his soul
Life’s whole,
He hears the anthem of the soil
While ingrates toil;
And sees beyond his little sphere
The waving fronds of heaven, clear.
~Louise Seymour Jones

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I’ve been trying to figure out today what it is about a garden that is so seductive and irresistible for me, but I’m still no closer to an answer than when I’ve pondered it before.  I just know that something in nature calls to me and touches me on a deep level, brings glad music to my heart, and feeds “life’s whole” within my soul.  That’s why the losses due to last weekend’s dirty “trick” have struck a grievous blow to my heart which in turn has sent me sinking down, down, down into what one writer has called winter’s “vale of grief.”  Normally I can shake things off pretty quickly, but in addition to that casualty the arthritis in my left knee and left foot have me hobbling around on a cane, unable to get outside and do things that need to be done in the garden, and that’s creating a bluer than blue, bluish “funk.”  Now after spending way too much time inside, stationary and feeling a bit sorry for myself, I’m STARVED!!!  Like a junkie, I need my “fix.”  I need to hear the “anthem of the soil.”  Moreover, I need to touch the earth and dig in the dirt.  I need to feel Eden’s beating heart, her rhythms.  I need to hear the birds singing over my head.  I need color.  I need to see things growing and to look upon flowery faces, even a wretched dandelion would do.  I need to feel the sun’s warmth on my back.  And as much as anything else I need to feel God’s palpable presence in my tiny corner of His sanctum sanctorum.

Alas, sadly, I’m afraid it will be sometime before all those needs are met.  So I dug around on Pinterest board’s trying to find the kinds of images that typically draw me into a garden’s web of magic and glory.  Since I have no way of knowing when Old Man Winter will return to his arctic cave nor when my body will stop betraying me, they and a a little garden poetry will have to suffice.

From there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find him if you search after him with all your heart and soul.  ~Deuteronomy 4:29   ✝

285. We men of Earth have here the stuff of Paradise – we have enough! ~Edwin Markham

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All things are connected.
Whatever befalls the earth
befalls the sons of the earth.
Man did not weave the web of life.
He is merely a strand in it.
Whatever he does to the web,
he does to himself.
~Chief Seattle

So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up.  So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.  ~Galatians 6:9-10   ✝